The Western History Association
A “one-man relocation team”: Scott Henry Peters and American Indian Urban Migration in
the 1930s
Author(s): Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
Source: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 17-36
Published by: Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State University on behalf of The Western
History Association
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A “one-man relocation team”:
Scott Henry Peters and American
Indian Urban Migration in the 1930s
Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
Federal urban relocation programs for American Indians, commonly believed
to have been launched in the 1950s, were actually first initiated under the aegis
of John Collier’s Office of Indian Affairs. As the case study of OIA Placement
Officer Scott Henry Peters shows, federal officials recognized by the early 1930s
that significant numbers of American Indians were migrating off-reservation.
As an American Indian working for the Indian Office, Peters attempted to
provide employment opportunities for young American Indian adults migrating to cities and help them adapt to modern urban life. This article extends the
literature on urban American Indian history back in time and reveals some of
the contradictions inherent in Collier’s policy initiatives.
I
n the early twentieth century, American
Indians began to migrate from their reservation communities to urban and non-reservation rural areas across the United States in small but growing numbers. American
expansion had caused massive land and resource losses, leading to desperate and
depressing conditions in tribal homelands. The often misguided efforts by the Office
of Indian Affairs (OIA) to assimilate or modernize Indian people and communities
only complicated their lives, frequently exacerbating the problems they faced on a
daily basis.1 Not surprisingly, the failure of U.S.-sponsored reservation economies, and
Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet/Métis) is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the
University of Montana. David R. M. Beck is Professor and Chair of Native American studies at
the University of Montana. Portions of this article were presented by LaPier, at the Great Lakes
History Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 1992, and by Beck, at the American
Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting in Springfield, Missouri, November 2012. Fellowships
from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Newberry Library, and the
University of Montana supported their research.
1
Before the Office of Indian Affairs was renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947, it
was referred to variously as the OIA, the Indian Office, the Indian Service, and the Indian
Western Historical Quarterly 45 (Spring 2014): 17–36. Copyright © 2014, Western History
Association.
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Western Historical Quarterly
Spring 2014
the abject poverty they engendered, caused some Indian people to seek opportunity
outside of reservation communities. Federal assimilation efforts, such as the boarding
school programs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, strengthened
this pattern of out-migration.
But despite the promise of assimilation—that Native individuals could participate in the socioeconomic benefits of the larger American society—opportunities to
do so were extremely limited. By the late nineteenth century, numerous tribal people
across the United States had joined local wage labor economies. Those living in rural
areas increasingly performed manual labor or took other menial jobs—some became
indispensable to their local economy. Native laborers also associated themselves with
specific professions, such as railroads or steel.2 Indians could obtain jobs in agriculture,
resource extraction, or other industries, but few opportunities existed beyond those at
a relatively menial level. The growing number of American Indians educated in offreservation boarding schools, for instance, found few economic opportunities in the
white man’s world.
In fact, having few other options, a significant number of Indians worked for the
Indian Service in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Cathleen D.
Cahill has observed in Federal Fathers & Mothers (2011), “the Indian Service was the
primary employer of the first generation of white-collar and professional Native workers.” By 1912 it employed some two thousand Indian people, who accounted for onethird of its regular workforce.3 A growing number of these employees held professional
positions. But outside the OIA, Native professionals, including those who moved to
urban centers farther from home, found it difficult to gain employment. Such a small
number of individuals succeeded as professionals in the white man’s world that most
of those who did became well known.4
This describes the condition of economics and employment in Indian country
when John Collier took charge of the Indian Service in 1933. He immediately initiated reforms, famously reversing several key policies that attacked tribal cultures and
Bureau. We use these terms interchangeably in this article.
2
William J. Bauer Jr., We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community, and
Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850–1941 (Chapel Hill, 2009); David R. M.
Beck, Seeking Recognition: The Termination and Restoration of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and
Siuslaw Indians, 1855–1984 (Lincoln, 2009), 68–95; Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds.,
Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives (Norman, 1996); Paige Raibmon,
Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast
(Durham, 2005), 74–115; Kurt M. Peters, “Watering the Flower: Laguna Pueblo and the Santa Fe
Railroad, 1880–1943,” in Native Americans and Wage Labor, ed. Littlefield and Knack, 177–97;
and Jim Rasenberger, High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World’s Greatest Skyline (New
York, 2004), 133–72.
3
Cathleen D. Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian
Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill, 2011), 260.
Other well-known individuals included Carlos Montezuma, Charles Eastman, and
Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa).
4
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Figure 1. Scott Henry Peters, [date unknown], folder Scott Henry Peters Office
Personnel, Civilian Personnel Records, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1850–1957.
Photo courtesy of National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO.
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Western Historical Quarterly
Spring 2014
communities. He put an end to reservation land allotment, empowered tribal governments in a limited way, and rescinded strictures on religious practices. He also recognized the issue of Indians migrating off-reservation, as well as its resultant problems,
and instituted a placement program that served as a precursor for the later relocation
policy initiative. This short-lived program illuminates some of the contradictions and
limitations inherent in his initiatives. Although Collier is known for putting an end
to forced assimilation and encouraging tribal self-determination, his initiatives continued paternalistic federal control of Indian affairs. This bureaucratic attitude ultimately
doomed the placement program.
Scott Henry Peters—the individual Collier hired to coordinate the program in the
Midwest—was a successful businessman and Indian community leader. (See figure 1.)
He became responsible for finding work for Indian people in the private sector, a challenging task in Depression-era America. Peters recognized that tribal members leaving their reservation communities needed help to successfully settle and make a living
elsewhere. A primary reason that he went to work for the Indian Service was to help
facilitate this. Although tribal people across the United States had increasingly joined
local wage labor economies, for the most part they did so close to home.
Getting jobs in faraway cities presented complex new challenges for Indian individuals, primarily due to separation from social support systems and severe limitations
in the ways they could make a living (because subsistence activities were no longer possible, for example). As William J. Bauer Jr. (Wailacki and Concow of the Round Valley
Indian Tribes) has observed, the strength of “social networks, usually family and kinship groups,” has been key to Native American economic success in the modern world.
And wage labor, for people still living in their homelands, could be supplemental rather
than the sole source of support, since it was but one of “a range of economic choices.” 5
Peters understood these obstacles, which seemed to make him the ideal person
for the job. The modern American Indian leader LaDonna Harris (Comanche) has
observed that tribal people create new kinship support systems when they move to
urban areas, and indeed, such kinship extends well beyond blood relations.6 Peters recognized and incorporated this need into his new work, viewing his role as two-pronged:
to provide support, especially for his younger charges, and to find full-time employment
for migrating Indians. But his efforts ultimately led to a falling-out between him and
the Indian Service.
Federal officials and tribal members struggled to create new systems and patterns of
work and behavior to enhance adaptation to modern changes in difficult times. Cahill
has observed that “[p]olicy makers argued that employing people who had been educated in federal Indian schools would offer living examples of the ‘civilized’ path they
5
Bauer, Migrant Workers, 8.
LaDonna Harris, in discussion with the authors, Americans for Indian Opportunity
Conferences, held in the United States, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Bolivia,
1993–2012.
6
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
hoped all tribal members would eventually take while also serving as a defense against
backsliding.” These individuals’ “agendas and actions made the bureau particularly
contingent and discordant, messy and divided.” 7 As Peters’s case shows us, when those
agendas conflicted too deeply with OIA policy, the Indian Service viewed the programs
as failures. The tension between Peters and the OIA ultimately led to the discontinuation of the placement program rather than its reform. This article explores how Peters’s
efforts increasingly shaped Indian country and the United States more broadly.
Until recently, the historical literature has largely ignored American Indian economic history when it did not fit Euro-American perceptions of communal tribal culture–based economies. Indian entry into the wage labor market, which began to occur
prior to the twentieth century, has been ignored for this reason. Instead, scholarship
focused on pre-reservation economic history and factors such as the impacts of resource
loss and land allotment. With few exceptions, scholars have only recently begun to
analyze tribal and individual Indian economic histories that broaden our perspectives.
Alexandra Harmon has argued that one of the effects of “anthropology’s long monopoly
on Indian scholarship” has been to keep economic historians out of the field of Indian
history.8 Her observation can be extrapolated to a variety of subfields that should be
given more attention.
The narrow study of American Indian history has resulted in the failure, with a
few exceptions, to acknowledge the development of urban Indian populations and communities prior to World War II.9 Urban Indian history has generally been told beginning with relocation efforts initiated by the federal government in the 1950s to move
individuals and families from reservations to urban centers across the United States.
Indeed, these significant demographic changes meant that by the late twentieth century,
most tribal members no longer lived in reservation communities. But the idea for such
a policy actually began to germinate much earlier. In the 1930s, the OIA established
a small placement office within its employment division to oversee employment programs in reservation and off-reservation communities, in both rural and urban settings.
The placement program initiated under Collier’s leadership as commissioner of
Indian Affairs developed from both the increasing awareness of the dire conditions in
Indian country following the release of the 1928 Meriam Report—officially titled The
7
Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers, 7, 259.
Littlefield and Knack, eds., Native Americans and Wage Labor; Brian Hosmer and Colleen
O’Neill, eds., Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the
Twentieth Century (Boulder, 2004); and Alexandra Harmon, Rich Indians: Native People and the
Problem of Wealth in American History (Chapel Hill, 2010), 11–2.
8
9
For notable exceptions, see Nicolas G. Rosenthal, Reimagining Indian Country: Native
American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Chapel Hill, 2012); Coll
Thrush, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (Seattle, 2007); David R. M. Beck,
“Developing a Voice: The Evolution of Self-Determination in an Urban Indian Community,”
Wicazo Sa 17 (Autumn 2002): 117–41; and Nancy Shoemaker, “Urban Indians and Ethnic
Choices: American Indian Organizations in Minneapolis, 1920–1950,” Western Historical
Quarterly 19 (November 1988): 431–47.
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Western Historical Quarterly
Problem of Indian Administration—and the ideals of Progressive Era reformers. The report
informed policy makers across the federal spectrum of the failure of forced assimilation
policies such as general land allotment and the education system to provide healthy
homelands for tribal people; it made clear the federal government’s failure to meet
its trust responsibilities toward Indians. Suggested solutions fell in line with previous
reform efforts—even those tied to failed policies in the decades preceding the report’s
release, from the 1880s through the 1920s.
Framing reformers’ early attitudes toward Indians was the idea that Native cultures
were dying and that Indian survival meant leaving those cultures behind. Reformers
recognized the impoverishment that the growth and expansion of American nationhood had brought to Indian people. They also believed that adapting Indians to
American culture on political, social, and economic fronts would move them from
poverty to prosperity. Politically that meant adopting Western-style institutions such
as the justice systems and police forces established in Indian country in the late nineteenth century. Socially it meant adapting to American belief systems, including
Christianity and education. And economically it meant taking up typical American
livelihoods in the increasingly industrialized trades and manufacturing sectors. By
the turn of the twentieth century, American Indians educated in the new boarding
schools—some of whom became white-collar professionals—allied themselves with
these reformers.10
Collier wanted to address the employment problem quickly. Few job opportunities
existed within tribal communities, and both the Great Depression and racial prejudice
complicated finding work away from reservations. Bauer aptly observed that in the job
market “Indians found themselves racialized in relation to working-class whites and
other migrants who competed with them for jobs.”11 Typecast into narrow employment categories at the same time as they entered alien cultural surroundings, Indians
faced unusually difficult challenges. Collier decided that the Indian Service should
provide assistance to individuals transitioning to employment in the modern world.
Collier intensified the growing trend of employing Indians in OIA positions
when possible, and he did so at the reservation, regional, and national levels. In 1934
Indians held one-third of the approximately five thousand “regular classified” Indian
Service positions; just five years later, this number grew to more than half. A change
in civil service hiring rules, in part, made this possible. Collier explained in 1934, “By
Presidential order this year all Indian Service positions under Civil Service are open to
Indians by noncompetitive examination.” In addition, Indian employees could more easily earn seniority, meaning they qualified sooner for better positions; and salaries became
10
Two of the key works on the progressive aspect of this era are Frederick E. Hoxie, ed., Talking
Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era (Boston, 2001) and Hazel W. Hertzberg,
The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements (Syracuse, 1971).
William Bauer, “Working for Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and the Market Economy in
Northern California, 1875–1936,” in Native Pathways, ed. Hosmer and O’Neill, 239.
11
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
somewhat more competitive in order to attract and keep better quality employees. The
Meriam Report, however, bemoaned the low level of OIA salaries.12
The OIA looked to its employment division, and the regional placement offices
within it, to expand employment opportunities for Indians. Collier’s reports to the
Secretary of the Interior throughout the 1930s illustrate this. The Meriam Report had
recognized in its opening words that “[a]n overwhelming majority of the Indians are
poor, even extremely poor, and they are not adjusted to the economic and social system of the dominant white civilization.” In addition, the report distinguished between
earned and other income: “The income of the typical Indian family is low and the
earned income extremely low.” So to help Indians achieve financial independence,
the placement office focused on wage-based employment, with a primary emphasis on
earned income.13
While most placements occurred on reservations or in Indian agencies, an increasing effort focused on finding both rural and urban work off-reservation for migrating
Indians. The authors of the Meriam Report recognized the need to provide work for
the small but steadily increasing number of tribal members leaving reservation communities, devoting seventy-five pages to a chapter on “Migrated Indians”: “Their motive
in migrating is almost wholly economic. Returned students, even though little more
than children themselves, and despite the best will in the world to ‘uplift’ their race,
in many cases see the hopelessness of attempting self-support when handicapped by
the limited opportunities on their reservations.”14
During the 1930s, the Indian Service increasingly focused on finding quality jobs,
not simply manual labor positions: “The employment division has centered its attention largely upon the placement of qualified Indians in the better type of jobs instead
of upon mass-recruiting of Indians for any and every type of work. There is developing,
therefore, a specialized and individualized placement procedure.” While the Meriam
Report suggested that local, state, and federal agencies outside of the Indian Service
would be in the best position to help Indians find jobs, under Collier the OIA did a
significant portion of that work itself.15 In doing so, it hired a small cadre of placement
officers to work in both rural and urban areas, opening and closing offices in cities on
12
“Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1934 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1934), I:20.1:934, 114 and
“Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” Report of the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal
Year Ended June 30, 1939 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1939), I:20.1:939, 23, both U.S. Documents, silver microfiche (hereafter Commissioner Report, year, microfiche number, page) and Lewis Meriam et
al., The Problem of Indian Administration. . . . (Baltimore, 1928; repr., New York, 1971), 155.
13
Meriam et al., Indian Administration, 3–4. The report distinguished between earned and
unearned income, the latter including lease money for land and natural resource extraction or
dividends.
14
Meriam et al., Indian Administration, 667–742, 736.
Commissioner Report, 1936, I:20.1:936, 205; Meriam et al., Indian Administration, 124–5;
and Commissioner Report, 1953, I:20.1:953, 123–4.
15
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Western Historical Quarterly
occasion in order to put officers in close proximity to jobs and the people who needed
them.16 In 1935 the OIA opened a Midwest office in Chicago, which it later moved
to Milwaukee, to serve the region from Michigan to Wisconsin. Scott Henry Peters, a
Chippewa businessman from Chicago’s North Shore who was active in national Indian
affairs, was hired to run the office. He held the position until 1942.17 Longtime Chicago
Indian community leader Willard LaMere (Winnebago) would refer to Peters’s role
many decades later as a “one-man relocation team.”18
Peters was an ideal candidate for a role in the new Collier administration. His success in business could be traced to a boarding school education that was significantly
influenced by the Progressive Era reform movement. In 1925 he became a leader of one
of the most successful national Native organizations of its day, the Grand Council Fire
of American Indians.19
Born in Isabella County, Michigan, in 1877, Peters identified his Indian name as
Te-Gwab, which he translated as “Bow.” Peters was schooled at Mt. Pleasant and Carlisle
Indian Industrial Schools, where he learned the craft of tailoring. He later attended a
business college for advanced vocational training, and then opened up his own cleaning and tailor shop north of Chicago in about 1905; he moved his business to Wilmette
in 1921. In the suburban cities of Waukegan, Wilmette, and Evanston where he lived
he was considered a prominent businessman. During his eight-year tenure at the OIA,
Peters’s primary concerns focused on advancing Indian rights, improving the conditions
under which Indians lived, and increasing public awareness of major issues regarding
modern Indians both on and off the reservation. One of his lifelong goals aimed “to
insure that the voice of our people shall be heard in determining our own destiny.”
He and the Grand Council Fire represented a new era in leadership, as off-reservation
Indians attempted to take control of both the Indians’ future and the outside world’s
views and definitions of Indians. This reflects what Harmon called a long-standing
pattern among Native American leaders: “In reality, Indians have taken active part in
processes that generated common images of Indians.”20
16
In 1936 the OIA closed an office in Kansas City “[b]ecause most of the girls placed were
from Oklahoma and wanted work nearer their homes. . . . An attempt is, therefore, being made to
bring this service to the Indians.” Commissioner Report, 1936, I:20.1:936, 205. In 1938 the OIA
closed the Gallup, New Mexico, office and opened one in Billings, Montana, the first in the
Northern Plains states. Commissioner Report, 1938, I:20.1:938, 257.
17
Folder Scott Henry Peters Office Personnel, Civilian Personnel Records, Bureau of Indian
Affairs, 1850–1957, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO (hereafter Personnel
Folder).
James B. LaGrand, Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945–75 (Urbana,
2003), 63. LaMere “first came to Chicago in the early 1920s.” “Willard LaMere, 72; Developed
American Indian Programs,” Chicago Tribune, 4 December 1990. Currently the Wisconsin
Winnebago identifies its name as the Ho-Chunk Nation.
18
19
In 1933 the organization was renamed the Indian Council Fire, although we refer to it as
the Grand Council Fire in this article.
20
Scott Peters, “The Development of One First American,” Illinois Clubwoman’s World,
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
To illustrate the drastic economic changes Indians had undergone in a short
period of time, Peters told his own story in a 1925 article that appeared in Illinois
Clubwoman’s World. An epidemic of typhoid fever forced his family to sell its land
allotment in Michigan to pay doctor bills. They purchased a second home with the
remaining money, which they sold after another bout with illness. They then left the
reservation to begin a nomadic life of migrant farm work and seasonal logging; Peters
was forced to work starting at age eleven. Like others of his generation, he and his five
siblings were sent away to boarding school—he left for boarding school at age fourteen—because they had no home.21 In later years, he cited these childhood experiences
as major influences in his life.
Living in poverty and overcoming family tragedies convinced Peters that the duty
of all people was to “encourage the young Indian to leave the reservation and . . . fight
his battle of life on his [own] merits.” He truly believed that Indians would have a better life off their tribal lands. Also, his business success taught him to think of himself
as a model of Indian entrepreneurship and proof that Indians could adapt to modern
America. In a comment reminiscent of earlier urban Indian leaders such as Carlos
Montezuma (Yavapai), Peters said, “Give my people the same opportunity that I have
had, and they will meet you face to face in this social and business world.”22
In a speech at the 1925 American Indian Day celebration in Chicago, Peters spoke
on “The Successful Indian of Today.” He appealed for increased educational opportunities and urged the public to support Indians both on and off the reservation.23 To
Peters, Indian survival depended on economic opportunity.
Progressive Era reformers like Peters thought Indians needed to take a place in
modern American society. Although in retrospect his actions may seem to have been
influenced by the non-Indian assimilationist philosophy of the time, he believed that
Indians could successfully enter the modern world without abandoning their tribal
November 1925; Scott Peters OIA employment application, 2 February 1935, Personnel Folder;
“To Chicago’s Indian Councils Come Chippewa and Blackfoot,” Christian Science Monitor, 3
April 1929; Flora Warren Seymour to Malcolm McDowell, 17 December 1925, folder Flora
Warren Seymour Correspondence, box General Correspondence, Records of the Board of Indian
Commissioners, 1869–1933, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1793–1999, Record Group
75, National Archives and Records Administration–Washington, DC (hereafter BIA Records);
Peters OIA employment application, Personnel Folder; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth
Census of Population: 1920, Illinois, Volume 67–68: Cook Co., Chicago City; and U. S. Bureau of
the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, Illinois: Cook Co., Chicago
City; “Indians Call for Full Citizenship, Resent Being Wards,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 28
September 1929; and Harmon, Rich Indians, 10.
21
Peters, “One First American.”
Scott Henry Peters, “Chippewa Favors Business Profession for the Indian,” American Indian
Magazine (July 1927): 15. For more on Montezuma’s leadership in Chicago, see Rosalyn R. LaPier
and David R. M. Beck, “Crossroads for a Culture,” Chicago History 38 (Spring 2012): 22–43.
22
“Wah-Ne-Tah to Speak Tonight, Indian Day Speaker Daughter of Blackfoot Chief,”
Evanston (IL) News-Index, 25 September 1925.
23
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Western Historical Quarterly
heritage. Economic success need not mean giving up being Indian. Other boarding
school–educated Indians of his time agreed, and they also increasingly began to view
the history and culture of Indians as an important contribution to American society.
With this in mind, Peters tried to change the way Americans viewed Indians, in terms
of both the present and the past.
His most powerful statement as president of the Grand Council Fire came in 1927
in response to Chicago Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson’s “America First” campaign, which
urged the city’s school system to teach American rather than British exceptionalism
in its histories. Peters wrote a moving document that he and other council leaders
presented to Thompson that was eventually entered into the Congressional Record. He
argued that if the mayor insisted on teaching America First, then history texts should
represent the first Americans accurately. “We do not know if school histories are proBritish,” he wrote, “but we do know that they are unjust to the life of our people—the
American Indians.” The document articulated numerous ways in which this was so.24
As his public role increased, Peters’s private business became less important. In the
years prior to the closure of his cleaning establishment in 1933, while he was president
of the Grand Council Fire, he increasingly gave public presentations and acted as a
spokesman for Indians in Chicago. In 1930 he helped plan the 1933–1934 Century of
Progress World’s Fair, where he served as chair of the Indian Participation Committee
and worked as a lecturer throughout the fair’s run.25
In January 1934, Peters submitted an application for employment in the new Collier
administration. He commented at the time, “It has been my life’s ambition to help
my people and promote a greater understanding between the Indians and the White
People.” Among Peters’s acquaintances, and a Grand Council Fire supporter, was Anna
Ickes, whose husband, Harold, served as Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior.
That spring, Anna wrote a note to E. R. Burton, the director of employment for the
OIA, recommending Peters for a job. Within days the OIA requested references from
Peters’s past employers and acquaintances.26
Peters then wrote to Burton that he hoped for work in “any part of the United
States.” He told Burton, “It will be an honor and privilage [sic] to give out first-hand
experience to my people and promote better understanding between the White and
Red Men, gradually leading the Indian to self-determination, and finally to self-government.” He observed that the Indian Service no longer resembled the organization
“Memorial of Grand Council Fire of American Indians,” 70 Cong. Rec. 8369–70 (1928),
reprinted in “There Are Many, Many Facts History Books Do Not Tell,” American Indian
Magazine (June 1928): 14.
24
25
“World’s Fair at Chicago,” American Indian Magazine (September/October 1930): 12.
Scott Peters to [?] Landsdale, 5 February 1934; John Collier to Peters, 26 February 1934;
Mrs. Harold [Anna] Ickes to E. R. Burton, 25 April 1934; Burton to R. M. Brown, 27 April 1934;
Burton to Wilmette State Bank, 27 April 1934; Burton to Jacob Barr, 27 April 1934; Burton to
Rufus Dawes, 27 April 1934; Burton to A. Ickes, 28 April 1934; and Burton to Fred Buck, 3 May
1934, all Personnel Folder.
26
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
that he had been raised to mistrust. He probably recognized what Cahill has observed:
that Indian OIA employees had the opportunity to impact policy in their efforts to
improve the quality of life for Indian people.27 Peters viewed a job within the Indian
Service as a continuation of work he had carried on as Grand Council Fire president.
After the fair ended in 1934, Peters’s friends from the Grand Council Fire solicited
officials to provide him with an OIA position. Founding council member Ada Gridley
wrote Collier that fall, describing Peters as “an exceedingly conscientious, loyal-minded
type of man, who gives the best there is in him to any work he undertakes.” Ickes himself
wrote to Edith Peters, assuring her the Department of the Interior was diligently working to find a job for her husband.28 By fall’s end, a senior employment agent within the
OIA recommended that the Minneapolis Office be divided into two regions—one covering the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, and the other covering Iowa, Wisconsin,
northern Illinois, and Michigan. Peters would be right at home in such a place. With
the influence and aid of his friends, in February 1935, at the age of fifty-seven, Peters
began his second career as a placement officer in the OIA’s employment division.29
Collier’s Indian Service was organized into three categories: administrative, policy,
and service. The employment division fell under the service category. The two sections
within the division—scholarship aid and employment—had national and field offices.
Peters was appointed as an assistant guidance and placement officer, and his initial
assignment took him to Chicago. But after in-service training in Washington, DC,
and the completion of a several-month-long trial period, he would be considered for a
higher grade of pay and an office in Minneapolis, with responsibilities throughout “his
entire district,” stretching from Michigan to Iowa and the Dakotas.30
Burton described his expectations in a letter to Peters prior to his accepting the
position. “You . . . would be expected to sell the idea of Indian employment to employers in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and possibly in parts of Michigan.
You would receive applications from Indians of this section, look up their qualifications and do your best to place them in suitable jobs.” More specifically, Peters was to
establish relationships with “public and private employment offices, industrial, commercial, civic, social, educational, and other organizations” and “analyze . . . the supply
of Indian labor available, classified by occupation and location,” within his service area.
27
Peters to Burton, 17 May 1934, Personnel Folder and Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers, 259.
Ada Gridley to Collier, 15 October 1934; Mrs. Scott [Edith] Peters to [Anna] Ickes, 26
September 1934; and Ickes to [Edith] Peters, 10 October 1934, all Personnel Folder.
28
29
Peters to Burton, 27 November 1934; memorandum by John Collier, 26 October 1935; E.
L. Compton to Burton, 9 November 1934; and Burton to Miss Roberts, 21 February 1935, all
Personnel Folder.
30
OIA Employment Division organizational charts, 12 February 1936, folder Organization
of Office of Indian Affairs, box 6, entry 1014Y, Office of Management Services Division of
Management Research, Organizational Charts and Related Records, 1936–68, BIA Records and
memorandum by E. R. Burton, 17 December 1934 and Burton to Peters, 31 January 1935, both
Personnel Folder.
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He was to connect Indians needing jobs with potential employers on a one-by-one basis
and provide follow-up oversight to confirm their ability to maintain employment. He
would essentially serve as a one-man employment agency for the region. According to
official documentation, Peters worked almost entirely on his own initiative, reporting
directly to Burton in Washington, although he was requested to seek advice from the
Minneapolis office.31
Peters viewed his job as having two separate but related purposes. A newspaper
reporter who interviewed him in September 1935 observed that, on the one hand, “For
those young Indians who want to leave their reservations and their rural lands and meet
white competition in the city, there is one program.” That consisted of Peters guiding
these individuals into appropriate fields of work in the urban areas within his jurisdiction. On the other hand, “For the Indians who do not want to leave their ancient culture and the poor reservations which the white man has left them, there is another.”
In this, Peters would aid individuals from more than a half dozen distinct tribal groups,
and many more tribal communities, in finding work on or near reservations close to
them. Of the former group, the reporter observed of Peters, “He has to supervise the
migration of the most restless elements of 60,000 people, from farm to city, where they
will take their place in the hurly-burly of modern competition.”32
By the end of February, Burton requested that Peters be provided a small space in the
Chicago Indian warehouse. The warehouse, which operated intermittently in Chicago
because of the city’s position as a railroad center, shipped goods destined for Indian
country under treaty agreements and the federal trust responsibilities toward Indian
tribes.33 Peters would spend little time at the warehouse; he was primarily expected to
be on the road or in the field creating relationships with employers and agencies and
lining up jobs for tribal members. This arrangement severely cut into his meager government salary. He owned a car but would need to pay maintenance and gasoline costs.
He was not permitted to claim mileage for his driving within Chicago—a sprawling
city with suburbs growing southeast toward Indiana, as well as north and west—even
when he was seeking out potential employers.34
31
Burton to Peters, 3 December 1934 and Personnel Classification Board Form No. 4, 11
February 1935, both Personnel Folder.
32
Curtis Fuller, “Lone Indian Employment Agent Tackles Big Task,” Evanston Daily NewsIndex, 26 September 1935, Personnel Folder.
33
Burton wrote, “His headquarters will probably be Waukegan, Illinois.” Burton to Roberts,
21 February 1935, Personnel Folder. This was where Peters had initially established his cleaning
business. Burton to Mr. Fry, 26 February 1935, Personnel Folder; “Chicago and Indian Supplies,”
Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 16 January 1886; “Chicago to be the Headquarters,” Daily Inter
Ocean, 25 February 1894; “Indian Supply Depot Closed,” Milwaukee Journal, 19 February 1895;
and “Bids for Indian Supplies,” Milwaukee Journal, 29 April 1896. For address changes as the
warehouse moved to different sites in Chicago in the early twentieth century, see letterhead on
stationary in Chicago Indian warehouse, Central Classified Files, 1907–1939, BIA Records.
Collier to Peters, 6 February 1935; Burton to employees, 26 February 1935; U.S.
Department of the Interior, Form 1-430, 28 February 1935; Peters to Burton, 3 October 1935; and
34
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
Peters immediately made contacts with manufacturing firms. He created a strong
working relationship with Greyhound Lines in Chicago and reported that its staff
was “very favorably impressed with the qualifications of our trade school graduates.”
He worked closely with Ford Motor Company and General Motors in Detroit to find
factory placements. Frank M. Langdon, the chairman of the Michigan Indian Affairs
Committee of the American Legion, reported in June that Peters “apparently is meeting
with considerable success” in the automobile industry. Peters believed that the “industrial
and commercial belt” provided “a wonderful field for my work” and that most factory
executives “are willing to co-operate with us on our program.” He regularly fielded calls
asking for both “boys and girls” for job placements by the fall of 1935 but had difficulty
following up due to the expense of driving from place to place. “I . . . find that with my
travel expense cut to [a] minimum, I cannot take time enough in the field to make my
necessary calls and placements with the large automobile mfg. companies in Michigan,
or to get into Wisconsin to make my follow up calls,” he told Burton. Peters earned a
50 percent salary raise that fall. In winter the bureau recommended that Peters move
his office to Milwaukee to be closer to many of his clients. He eventually rented office
space there and completed his move as of 1 July 1936.35
Despite the handicaps and adjustments affecting both Peters and the OIA, Peters
succeeded in placing individuals in jobs. By late spring the following year, Peters estimated that he had placed thirty-five “girls” in jobs in Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee;
he reported that most were thriving. He considered one of his failures a woman who
married at eighteen. “I have been informed that she has been quite irresponsible even
before she came to work at Chicago,” he wrote to his new supervisor, E. L. Compton,
and he heard “that she had previously been with the circus.” He also reported that “two
or three girls” returned home “on account of lonesomeness,” and two others “were not
able to make good as house workers.” Compton recognized the challenges inherent in
such placements, telling Peters he was “to be complemented [sic] for your fine success.”36
Peters placed all the young women in domestic household work, with pay between
$5 and $8 per week. Peters viewed these types of positions as gateway jobs. He believed
that the work provided an opportunity to “establish a residence there,” after which he
would look for jobs for them “in factories and commercial work”; but few such jobs were
Burton to Peters, 14 October 1935, all Personnel Folder. After a General Accounting Office ruling, the commissioner’s office granted and then rescinded permission to reimburse Peters’s local
travel related to work. Memos from commissioner [Collier] to Peters, [n.d.], Personnel Folder and
Irving Cutler, Chicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent (Dubuque, 1976), 141.
35
Peters to commissioner [Collier], 26 October 1940; Frank M. Langdon to Burton, 27 June
1935; Peters to Burton, 3 October 1935; U.S. Department of the Interior, Form 1-612, 26 October
1935; Guy W. Numbers to Peters, 30 October 1935; S. W. Crosthwait to Peters, 14 April 1936;
assistant to commissioner [Crosthwait] to secretary [Ickes], 16 April 1936; Numbers to Peters, 17
April 1936; E. J. Armstrong to Peters, 19 May 1936; and Scott Peters oath of office, 6 November
1937, all Personnel Folder.
Peters to Compton, 26 June 1936 and Compton to Peters, 30 June 1936, both
Personnel Folder.
36
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available for women. He also believed “that girls need more supervision than boys,” and
so he worked with his old allies at the Grand Council Fire to establish an Indian girls’
club in Chicago. His wife, Edith, assisted him in this effort, and the club organized
picnics, sponsored dances, and held regular meetings at a downtown YMCA. In addition, through his connections with Illinois women’s clubs, Peters secured scholarships
that enabled Indian girls to attend nursing school.37
Peters found factory work for the young men, placing nineteen in the automobile
manufacturing industry by fall 1936. He also established social organizations for young
adults and attempted to organize an effort to loan money to Indians new to the city
so that they could afford housing while awaiting work. The Indian Service, however,
noted that this plan, though laudable, could not be considered part of Peters’s official
duties.38 It was the first indication of differences between Peters and the OIA regarding
the scope and meaning of his work.
Peters also aided individuals in acquiring appropriate clothing and even dental
treatment. And when young adults became ill, he did what he could to help them. His
old friend Ada Gridley wrote to Collier that Peters succeeded in gaining the confidence of those he placed in jobs and their employers: “The activity in Indian affairs
which has resulted from his work here is something to be proud of.” The impetus for
doing this probably emanated from both traditional Native values—helping to care for
those less fortunate than the caregiver—and the effect of Peters’s progressive reformist training, which sometimes led to moralistic responses to situations. In one case he
wrote his supervisor, “I have been very depressed lately to learn that so many of our
people are using peyote and marihuana.” Some Progressive Era tribal leaders, as well
as many employees within the Indian Service, frowned upon the use of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus and sacrament of the Native American Church. Peters’s supervisor
merely recommended that he contact the police and not discuss it with other Indians.39
In addition to carrying out job-related duties, Peters continued to serve tribal communities in both educational and advocacy roles. His ongoing relationship with urban
Indian leaders and women’s clubs dated to the early twentieth century.40 During his
37
Peters to Compton, 26 June 1936 and Peters to Fred H. Daiker, 13 February 1942, both
Personnel Folder.
38
Peters to Compton, 18 November 1936 and Crosthwait to Peters, 8 February 1937, both
Personnel Folder.
39
R. G. Chambers to Peters, 3 November 1936; Peters to Olive Gwinn, 11 November 1936;
Peters to J. G. Townsend, 1 December 1936; Townsend to Peters, 11 December 1936; Peters to
Eugene J. Warren, 13 January 1937; Peters to Wilfred Tyosh, 25 January 1937; Peters to J. C.
Cavill, 7 June 1939; F. M. Mueller to Peters, 24 May 1939; Gridley to Collier, 11 July 1936; and
Compton to Peters, 6 August 1938, all Personnel Folder and Omer Stewart, Peyote Religion: A
History (Norman, 1987).
“Man of Thousand Voices Will Give ‘Carmen’ at Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 30
November 1941. Descriptions of some of these earlier relationships and discussions of urban
Indian leadership in this era can be found in LaPier and Beck, “Crossroads for a Culture” and
Beck, “Developing a Voice.”
40
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
entire tenure in the OIA he constantly reminded women’s club members of their good
work on behalf of Indian people and that Indians deserved a place in modern American
society. He wanted clubwomen to know that “the Indian loves his Country and we
should be responsible for helping him find and maintain his rightful place in it today.” 41
Advocacy remained an important role for American Indian leaders as they moved
to cities in the early twentieth century and transferred their traditional values to new
settings. Peters infused his tenure as president of the Grand Council Fire with this value,
and he continued it with his work in the Indian Service and those activities that went
beyond his job description. He established a social club in Detroit for young Indian
boys and girls, for example. He also advocated for individual tribal members caught in
difficult situations. In 1935, soon after he took the job at the Service, he alerted authorities to a gang of ruffians in the Detroit suburb of Berkley who had “been preying on the
Indian girls” in the area “for several years,” according to the American Legion’s Frank
M. Langdon. Peters worked to convince the young women to testify against the thugs,
thereby aiding the prosecuting attorney.42
Peters’s supervisor described his work in glowing terms: “he has performed his
duties with excellent results.” Based on this and a 1937 evaluation that rated his work
as very good, he received another promotion and a salary raise to $2,000 annually. He
continued to receive exemplary performance evaluations, scoring in the very good
range again in 1938 and in the extreme high end of the good range the next year. By
early 1940, his job performance received even more praise; during the first half of the
year, the number of placements almost equaled that of the previous year. Whether the
country was beginning to pull out of the Depression or Peters’s contacts were strengthened enough to pay bigger dividends, the OIA was happy with his work. Peters felt
so good about his success that he asked to expand his operations to Ohio so he could
place mechanics at Greyhound in Cleveland. The Indian Office turned him down due
to what they considered his already unmanageably large territory.43
In addition to praise, the OIA criticized Peters for his willingness (or insistence) to
do work beyond his job description. In summer 1939, the assistant clerk working under
him complained to Peters’s supervisor that “he often tries to handle social work cases,”
when these should be under the purview of the social worker in Michigan. Because
41
Meeting minutes, 24 September [1936?], 15 March 1939, 10 December 1940, [n.d.] January
1941, 19 February 1941, and 18 February 1942, all folder 27, box 17, Indian Welfare, 1936–1947,
Departmental Files 1924–1981, Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs Records, 1894–1984,
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL (hereafter Indian Welfare).
42
Beck, “Developing a Voice,” 121–6; meeting minutes, 19 December 1940, Indian Welfare;
and Langdon to Burton, 27 June 1935, Personnel Folder.
E. L. Compton, “Field Service—Regular Rolls Classification Sheet, United States
Department of the Interior,” 3 November 1937; E. L. Compton, efficiency report, 1 July 1937; personnel reallocation document, 19 November 1937; Numbers to Peters, 30 November 1937;
Crosthwait to Peters, 13 December 1937; Compton, efficiency report, 1 April 1938; E. J. [sic]
Skidmore, efficiency report, 23 June 1939; Skidmore to Peters, 15 March 1940; Peters to commissioner [Collier], 26 October 1940; and Skidmore to Peters, 8 November 1940, all Personnel Folder.
43
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he was acting outside of his own area of expertise, she questioned the efficacy of his
work. She also observed that “when he is in the field he quite often advises Indians to
write him concerning educational matters,” when these “should be turned over to [the]
Superintendent of Indian Schools” in Milwaukee.44 Peters blurred the lines between his
responsibilities to the Service and to Indian individuals, which increased his conflicts
with the OIA. His background in Indian community work and his own personal life
history caused him to define his job more holistically than the Indian Service desired.
William R. Zimmerman, assistant commissioner of Indian Affairs under Collier,
also expressed concern that Peters did not recognize proper boundaries related to his
position. In 1940 he wrote to Collier regarding an incident that occurred during a law
and order conference in Minneapolis. Peters was not afraid to speak out in public, and
Zimmerman “objected most strenuously to” some of his remarks. Peters reported at the
conference that his work at the Red Lake Indian Reservation led him to extol “the
attractive features of life in the cities” to school children, which in turn led “almost all
of the children” to conclude “that they were looking forward to leaving the reservation
and living in nearby cities.” A note written in pencil, probably by Collier, read, “Peters
keeps on this kind of talk. He doesn’t know anything else. He can’t be reconditioned,
I opine.” 45 Collier was likely correct in this assessment. Peters’s own experience shaped
his beliefs, after all, and these experiences had taught him that consistent employment
gains would be found off-reservation.
So far as Zimmerman was concerned, however, this worked against OIA policy.
Employment was a key feature of the policy—the Service recognized that an increasing
number of tribal members were migrants, in both rural and urban contexts—yet the
program was not intended to encourage removal from reservation communities but to
provide employment opportunities for those who decided to make the move on their
own. In August, while Peters was vacationing in New York, the commissioner called
him into the central office in Washington, DC, “for the purpose of discussing employment problems in your district.” 46
In 1941 Ralph West of Detroit also complained to Collier about Peters. West, a
Native American and ex-Marine who had graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, was
in his second year of law school and was “employed at the Ford plant.” He approached
Peters in the hope of obtaining a less physical job but did not receive the help that he
wanted. He charged that Peters failed to keep in mind “the larger purpose” of his work
as a “vocational guidance officer . . . to wit; the advancement of the Indian generally, in
all fields of endeavor.” West believed that Peters put too much emphasis on employing
as many Indians as possible rather than focusing on individual needs. He charged that
Peters placed all men and boys in factory work and all girls and women in housework,
44
Memorandum by acting assistant to commissioner, 24 July 1939, Personnel Folder.
Assistant commissioner [William R. Zimmerman] to Collier, 7 February 1940 and note by
JC [Collier?], 8 February 1940, both Personnel Folder.
45
46
Peters to commissioner [Collier], 5 August 1940, Personnel Folder.
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
even in the case of skilled or college-educated individuals. He added that this kind of
“menial” work “can be had by consulting the daily ‘want ads.’ ” West also charged that
Peters referred to Indians as “backward” when speaking with prospective employers;
although Indians were shy, West argued, they should not be referred to as backward.
He implored Collier to hire a more competent employee for this position. The Indian
Office assured West that his letter would be useful to them.47
Each man reflects a different era of experience in Indian country. West, who represents New Deal ideologies, was less influenced by progressive values than people like
Peters. Progressives saw Indians as largely helpless and in need of aid, which ironically
conflicted with their views of the importance of education and helping Indians stand
on their own. This self-contradiction becomes apparent when someone like West asks a
Progressive Era leader for assistance. While this incident may point to Peters’s inability
to adapt to changing times, it may simply reflect his own idea about the importance of
placing individuals in jobs in cities until they could become established and seek more
meaningful employment.
Peters received his first unsatisfactory grade at his service evaluation a month later
despite achieving a 41 percent increase in permanent placements outside of the Indian
Service—from 161 to 227—in a single year. The comments on his evaluation reflect
both types of complaints he had received of late: “Mr. Peters is not qualified by training or experience as an Employment Agent. His employment activities are seemingly
often at variance with the established policies of the Indian Service, particularly in
regard to the inducement of Indians to leave the reservation to obtain employment in
urban areas.” 48 Such complaints seem to be a convenient excuse to ease Peters out of
his position more than a reflection of actual policy. A fine line always existed between
finding employment for off-reservation Indians and the recognition—by both Peters and
those within OIA bureaucracy—that numerous tribal members migrated off-reservation.
Peters had never made a secret of his belief that Indians could best succeed away from
reservation communities. Early on his encouragement to those wanting to make a living in the city was viewed as positive; later it came to be seen as counterproductive.
In June 1941, the OIA again reprimanded him, this time for taking three “Indian
girls” from Macy, Nebraska, to Milwaukee for housework rather than finding them
work locally. Despite the allegations, Peters insisted, “It is the policy of this office not
to encourage young men or girls to leave their homes and seek employment in cities.”
He did so only at their or their families’ request, he averred. After the girls had been
forced to leave Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota, Peters had tried unsuccessfully to find them work in Sioux City, Iowa, only thirty miles from home. Peters knew
from his own family’s experience the desperate need for income that accompanied
47
Ralph West to Collier, 1 March 1941 and Skidmore to West, 7 March 1941, both
Personnel Folder.
Scott Peters service rating form, 15 April 1941 and untitled statistical document, 24 April
1941, both Personnel Folder.
48
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abject poverty and the role young people played in helping to support their families.
Nonetheless, OIA officials stated they were uncomfortable because “contrary to Office
instructions he takes young Indian girls to the larger cities for domestic services, etc.” 49
The Indian Service reorganized as U.S. involvement in World War II unfolded.
Peters’s office now came under the welfare division, and new instructions about his
position specified that his work “must supplement and not conflict with the economic
and social programs of reservations.” The Indian Office clearly rejected Peters’s efforts
to provide the broad variety of services individuals needed to succeed in a new and
sometimes bewildering environment. It advised him to build new contacts and that
the “most important part of your job” was to “[s]ell employers and agencies on the idea
of using Indians.” It also encouraged him to make more placements and contacts in
smaller rather than larger cities.50 At this time, OIA policy began to shift back toward
keeping Indians in reservation communities despite the fact that they were leaving on
their own in increasing numbers. Peters was caught on the wrong side of the federal
government’s policy pendulum as it swung past him in the other direction.
Collier’s Indian Office largely reflected the reformist background of the man himself. He worked hard to implement policies that would reverse the deleterious impacts
of previous federal efforts and provide for the development of modern tribal economies
and political systems while recognizing the value of Indian cultural perspectives and
activities. But Collier’s perspective enshrined a backward-directed policy rather than
one that incorporated the modern economic and demographic changes in the United
States. Tom Holm has observed that Collier “was decidedly critical of industrial and
urban culture” due to his own disenchantment with it. Collier’s view, coupled with a
romanticized view of American Indian life, contradicted Peters’s efforts to help Indians
adapt to city life far from reservation homelands.51
Peters’s government work came to an abrupt end in 1942. He had asked to be
hospitalized or moved back to Chicago two years earlier for outpatient treatment for
headaches (after a serious automobile accident on the Menominee Reservation in 1936)
and symptoms from “a moderately severe case of diabetes.” By June 1941, Indian Office
personnel were deciding whether to keep or dismiss the sixty-four-year-old Peters, whose
work could be physically strenuous as well as emotionally debilitating. As Cahill has
observed, the grueling nature of Indian Service jobs meant its employees found it challenging “to remain healthy until the retirement age of seventy.” 52
49
Daiker to Peters, 18 June 1941; Peters to Daiker, 7 July 1941; and assistant to commissioner
to Frank Christy, 23 June 1941, all Personnel Folder.
50
Daiker to Peters, 23 June 1941, Personnel Folder.
Tom Holm, The Great Confusion in Indian Affairs: Native Americans & Whites in the
Progressive Era (Austin, 1985) and Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform,
1920–1954 (Tucson, 1977).
51
52
Memorandum by Meta Clark, 25 June 1941; Peters to Compton, 3 July 1936; statement of
A. E. Winter, 25 July 1936; Peters to Compton, 3 August 1936; Merle E. Whitlock to Compton, 8
August 1936; and “Employee’s Notice of Injury and Original Claim for Compensation and
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Rosalyn LaPier and David R. M. Beck
Federal employment policies also became stricter. Peters failed a required OIA civil
service examination, resulting in a change in his employment status from classified to
unclassified. Peters believed that not having time to prepare for the test, which took
place immediately after he had returned from a strenuous road trip, and being examined
as a clerk rather than as a field officer negatively affected his results. Internal documentation suggests that the Service was dissatisfied with his work but unsure whether
or how to dismiss him.53
Then, just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, non-defense government expenditures were slated for elimination so that monies could be directed to the U.S. war
effort. The fund that had paid Peters’s salary since he came on board at the OIA was
axed almost immediately, as civilian agencies faced major funding cuts. The Washington,
DC, office of the OIA moved to Chicago in 1942 to make more room in Washington
for defense space needs—Peters asked for, but was not provided, defense work—and
the OIA abolished his position on 25 April of that year. In one final irony, his last service evaluation rated his work as good. Unfortunately, within months of his dismissal,
Peters suffered a stroke and became a “semi-invalid.” 54
It would be another decade before the modern relocation program would try to
find jobs for American Indians in urban areas, but that effort would focus heavily on
permanently moving people from reservation communities to cities. By contrast, under
Collier the OIA focused on employment—both rural and urban—without specifically
encouraging relocation. With reservation employment opportunities limited, the Indian
Service nonetheless attempted to find work close to the places where people lived. As
Zimmerman argued, the OIA’s policy was not to encourage people to move to urban
areas. Nonetheless, more and more tribal members made that decision. For a while,
the Office continued to help migrating Indians find jobs in cities. But Collier’s Indian
Service ignored the trend of Indian migration and based its policies on an unrealistic
view of the needs of tribal members.
More broadly, Collier’s focus on “traditional” economic development in fields such
as arts and crafts and the type of agriculture that the U.S. government found acceptable helped cement societal stereotypes about Native American work and economies
at the same time Indians moving off-reservation in the early twentieth century contradicted this view. Men like Peters further complicated the narrow public and federal
definition of successful Indians as those who assimilated or threw off their tribal past
for a modern, mainstream American cultural future. Even these Indians’ own rhetoric
Medical Treatment,” 25 August 1936; and Peters to commissioner [Collier], 12 August 1940, all
Personnel Folder and Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers, 255.
53
Daiker to Collier, 15 July 1941 and Peters to Skidmore, 23 July 1941, both Personnel Folder.
Skidmore to Peters, 31 December 1941; “Scott Henry Peters Retirement Report Card”;
Peters to Collier, 4 January 1942; Scott Peters efficiency rating, 31 March 1942; [Edith] Peters to
Skidmore, 23 November 1942; F. T. Smith to [Edith] Peters, 18 December 1942; Bradford F. Miller
to Indian Field Service, 7 August 1948; Zimmerman to Miller, 3 September 1948; Betty Elliot to
John Brophy, 3 October 1949; and Daiker to Elliot, 18 October 1949, all Personnel Folder.
54
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at times reinforced that notion. Yet in many cases they brought themselves into the
modern world using traditional tribal values to ground their relationship to new surroundings. As Menominee tribal member Roy Oshkosh aptly observed in a 1927 Chicago
Daily Tribune interview, “we like our modern comforts now.” 55 This did not mean they
gave up being Indian, only that they continued to adapt to a changing environment,
as they had for millennia.
Although many tribal members believed they needed to change the ways they lived
in the world, many who moved away from their communities, including Progressive
Era reformers like Peters, retained the essential cultural values of their fellow tribesmen and tribeswomen. Peters, following the example of Carlos Montezuma before
him, conducted his work in Chicago and beyond using historic tribal leadership values for modern economic and social purposes. In the end, this was irreconcilable with
both John Collier’s Office of Indian Affairs and American perceptions of Indians.56
Ultimately, the Indian Service viewed Peters’s work as a failure. Ironically, when the
OIA established the relocation program in the 1950s, the earlier placement program
was not even a part of institutional memory.
By the early 1940s, the OIA could not stem the tide of Indians leaving reservation
communities for large cities on their own without federal assistance. Its policy reversal
stood in contradiction to the social change occurring in Indian country. Over the next
several decades, the strength of this demographic shift meant the majority of Indians in
the United States lived in urban areas. Peters’s short-lived work, which was reborn more
than a decade later during the era of termination, began to lead the way in accommodating this change—until it was abruptly cut short. The failure to continue this effort
represents a missed opportunity for the OIA to serve the needs of Indian country in a
twentieth-century context.
Scott Henry Peters was well suited by personality and life and job experience to
do the work he did until health problems, exacerbated by age, slowed him down and
times changed faster than he could. Despite many barriers, he aided thousands of
American Indian individuals to find their place within the rapidly changing world
that was remaking tribal society in the United States. In doing so he fulfilled his goal
of expanding opportunities for Indian people in the most difficult of circumstances.
Peters had fulfilled what he referred to as “my life’s ambition . . . to serve while making
a livelihood for myself.” 57
55
“Squaws Rule Wigwam Now, Redskin Sighs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 27 February 1927.
For more on the difference between American perceptions of Indians and the sometimes
incongruous or contradictory reality, see Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places
(Lawrence, 2006).
56
57
Peters to Landsdale, 5 February 1934, Personnel Folder.
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